Cold Water
by Broccoli-xxxx
Summary: Ginny Weasley finally has time to recover from...well, everything. Ginny and Dean, though the pairing is only a small thing, after the war. Rated for themes and mild language. Do review.


A.N; Well, this one was difficult. I haven't liked Ginny for a while now, but somehow I understand her better now. I might write more about Ginny at some point, but this is me wrapping up the question I may have raised: what about Ginny? See for yourself. Ties in with Small Blessings and Fondness And Apples.

I don't know whether you guys will like it as much as my other two. It was hard to write Ron and Harry as sex-charged teenagers, but it needed to be done in order for this to work. I've always thought Ginny would've been messed up since her first-year and the Riddle incident, so this is her recovery, now that she has the time.

Enjoy.

* * *

Cold Water

Cold water. Freeze me. Numb my mind so I can't dwell on this mess.

The chill seeps down her throat and then down into the appropriate organs, and she gasps.

It is the dead of night, a heady summer evening. Ginny Weasley found herself alone.

They say no man is an island. _What about a woman?_

* * *

Harry and Ron are better together than she ever was with him.

They think she doesn't see them, but she always does. It's their hiding it that makes it more obvious.

They're kissing. Lips pressed to lips, tongues dancing, hands tugging at places even she didn't get to see.

Ron's hands are keen and insistent as he unbuttons Harry's fly and yanks the zip down. Harry laughs into Ron's mouth and the wonderful sound is swallowed whole by another passionate kiss.

Harry never kissed her like that. _Harry barely ever laughed._

She has to run away when Harry's hands creep below the waistband of Ron's jeans and Ron leans against his bedroom door, almost shutting it on her fingers.

Ginny was always good at running. Scenery flew by like fragmented images from an aged film and she collapsed in the family orchard, where the apples had fallen to the ground, some rotting – so the dry summer heat was dampened by the sweet smell of apples.

_Goddamn. Apples._

The scent reminds her of everything she couldn't do for her so the tears fall from her brown eyes like a waterfall of bottled-up trauma. She scrubs her closed fists against her eyes, pressing her fingertips into the spaces between the edges of her eyes and her prefect snub nose, trying to stem the flow.

There's a hollow area of silence, permeated by painful, hiccoughing sobs that told a tale of such effort where there was no use.

* * *

Ginny did not go home that night. She stayed in the orchard, inhaling the scent of that mocking fruit like cheap therapy.

Ron was always the pie-maker in the Weasley set, along with their mother. Cold hands, you see, not like Ginny's soft, hot hands. She played Quidditch to attempt to harden them but still they refused to sculpt to her will.

She lay flat on her back, staring up at the open sky so that the stars were reflected in her wide eyes and she could not see anything else.

_Where did she belong?_

Not here, surely. They all leave her in the end.

Harry with Ron.

Hermione with Luna.

Neville with Hannah.

Ernie with Susan.

Seamus with Lavender.

What about Dean? That sweet, artistic black boy she'd used as a distraction.

That one that might've died this year had it not been for the boy he'd been dumped for.

She is a bad person. She used Michael Corner just the same but she didn't think of him, not even _once._ But now…now that the cold, earthy summer rain is falling on her and she can smell life all around her, she wonders whether Dean can smell the same thing now that he is safe.

* * *

She wakes early, to the sounds of birds singing. They are like a choir, serenading the previous night's epiphany as if it still hung heavy in the air.

She will go and see Dean. Apologize. Ask for friendship, if nothing more.

Slowly, the fire-haired maiden rose from her grassy bed, stretched – her mouth open with the tongue peeking out; catlike, like her long limbs curling outwards to unreachable skies – and walked back to her home as the sun came up, casting brilliant hues of everything across the morning skies.

She glanced back at the orchard clearing. Dew clung wetly to each blade of grass and every inch of her body, setting a pleasing _(numbing)_ coldness into her bones. She can see the dry silhouette of her still, slumbering body in the grass, a shadow of her vibrant, moving self. She wonders if perhaps she was killed in her sleep, and that darker outline is all that is left of her body as she moves onward – _where?_

Ginny walked away, shivering; though from a different kind of chill.

* * *

Dean lived with his family, still, who had remained safe through the war in hiding. It was a big, joyful kind of family, not unlike the Weasleys, and Ginny was immediately welcomed in, despite having dumped their only magical offspring.

Dean's step-brothers and sisters were all younger, and Muggle; Dean's father had been a wizard slain by Death Eaters when he refused to join them, leaving Dean with a gift he knew nothing about until he turned 11.

The tall black boy was forgiving. The evenings were a little colder where Dean lived, in London, but he and Ginny wrapped up with hot tea and sat out in the small garden nevertheless, on wrought-iron patio chairs.

"So…if you had known…if he was still here…you wouldn't have had to spend this past year on the run?"

"I guess. I don't think I would've liked Hogwarts much better, though…and my dad would still have been killed for marrying a Muggle. I respect him in so many ways, I just wish I could have met him."

Ginny stared at the tall, broad boy opposite. He seemed so big, so familiar and warm, that it brought tears to her eyes.

"Oh, Dean. I'm so sorry for what I did to you."

Dean seemed alarmed by her change in temperament and was at her side in minutes, crouching by her chair with an arm around her.

"Hey now, what's all this about?"

And soon it all bubbled out like one of Neville's potions from so long ago, spilling over the edges of the cauldron in her mind. And Dean didn't speak, only nodded and whispered nonsense words in her ear until her sobs receded to dry hiccoughs.

"I'm such a bad person for doing this to you," she whispered bitterly.

Dean chuckled, "Bad person? No. I've been wanting to know who's gotten together. Hermione and Luna, wow…but Harry and Ron? Come on."

"What?"

Dean looked at her carefully and stood up, "I dunno…maybe I've always had good perception or something, but…that Harry and Ron thing. It's kinda always been there. Look back on their interactions…"

And Ginny could suddenly see clips of Harry and Ron fitting together so perfectly, everything sliding into place that now she did not wonder how it had happened, she wondered why she hadn't seen it sooner.

_"Goddamn…"_

Dean smiled, "Sometimes it takes a good friend to make you realize something that's been there all along."

A good friend. That's what she needed. Dean was here, he wouldn't leave.

And yet the hollow aching in her heart did not subside when she left him that evening.

Because maybe she realized something else, too.

Dean did not live under the same sky as she did…and yet, she felt as if she wanted him to.

They say that one is the loneliest number. She had realized, all by herself, something that had been there all along.

_Dean Thomas._

* * *

They're the lost pair, Ginny and Dean.

They go to the port one day – he in a suit-jacket and jeans, she in a peach sundress and battered sneakers.

They look a right pair – Ginny is petite, ginger and freckled; Dean is tall, dark, and handsome. They find themselves holding hands companionably, though this basic touch of skin to skin has Ginny's heart racing.

He leads her to the end of the pier, and they sit, legs dangling off the end, a bucket between them. Dean takes two crabbing lines and a packet of smoked bacon from the bucket, sets them aside, and then trots off to fill the bucket with sea water.

"Today, I'm going to teach you crabbing."

Dean ripped the smoked bacon up, sleeves folded back to reveal surprisingly manly forearms – Harry always was a bit…girlish? – and attached one to the hook on the end of his crabbing line. Slowly he lowered it into the water, and said,

"Your turn."

Ginny mimicked his actions; growing up in a family of boys had torn away any girlish squeamishness she might have had in the first place. After she had lowered her line till the hook reached the bottom of this man-made sea, she questioned,

"Now what?"

Dean grinned, pulling up his line with swift, sure pulls, a crab dangling harmlessly from the bacon at the end,

"Become one with the line. It's weighted so you feel a bite."

He placed the crab carefully into the bucket, and stabbed a new piece of bacon to the end of his line.

Ginny abandoned her line temporarily, staring at the scuttling crab in the bucket, ripping his prized bit of bacon to edible shreds.

_I am that crab. Trapped. Alone. Decorating my life with a small prize to make myself feel something._

"What do we do when we've caught enough?"

"We put them back."

They crab for a few hours, return the crabs to their sea homes.

Ginny resolves to become vegetarian, just like Dean. He became one straight after the war - after seeing friends and enemies alike slaughtered for some greater good, like animals, he felt ill just to _look_ at meat. It doesn't seem right that anything should die 'for the greater good' nowadays – they're so young and they've seen enough meaningless death to last a lifetime.

* * *

Her friends don't visit anymore. They're too _busy._

Dean does, however, and Molly welcomes him in, smiling because Dean is a natural gentleman.

Ginny begins to notice – and sometimes even remember – odd things about Dean.

He likes his tea milky with one sugar. He'll try any type of tea, but his favourite is Darjeeling, followed by traditional English breakfast tea.

He can knit and sew well, having grown up in a big family (like Ginny) and having to mend – or make – his own clothes due to pay-cheques being stretched around a whole family like a thin blanket.

He doesn't shop at wizarding shops often – at least, not the ones in Diagon Alley. He picks up his robes at wizarding second-hand shops in small wizarding towns, and his Muggle clothes at Muggle charity shops in small corners of London.

He is a gardener. His favourite flowers are sunflowers and violets. She can see him breathing in the scent of violets from their garden every so often, and she smiles.

"So, Dean, how're you, now that the war's over?" Molly Weasley is smiling at her daughter's _(best)_ friend in her characteristically lovely way, despite the lines put on her face by loss, war, and destruction.

"I'm…I would say good, but it doesn't fit. I'm better than I would be, thanks to Ginny," Dean replies, honesty on his _(beautiful)_ face.

Ginny smiles at the absurdity of this situation. She is a bad person. He is just being kind. Molly stops fidgeting her fingers anxiously and smiles broader, "I daresay we'll all get better soon. More tea?"

Harry and Ron come down, and when they see Dean and Ginny, their twin smiles falter, but stay in place. Their lips are kiss-swollen and pink, their faces flushed and hair mussed. Ginny can see the scene in her mind's eye – the two boys grasping at each other desperately, tearing kisses from each other's lips and their bare chests pressed together, attempting to close the small amount of space that remains between them --

-- it stings like a re-opened wound, though not as much as before. She smiles at them and they relax. _Goddamn,_ she thinks, _I'm a bad person. Dean doesn't need my drama._

"Dean, do you wanna go see our orchard? I think it'll still be warm out."

Dean looks at Molly beseechingly – _May I leave?_ – and Molly nods with a wan smile, "Go on, I'll just put the dinner on for when you get back. Boys, don't think you're getting out of helping!"

The pair – Ginny and Dean, that is – leave the big, oak table and slide out of the back door as Harry and Ron feverishly set about helping the tired mother of seven.

The walk is brief – Ginny breaks into a joyful run out of habit and Dean joins her, long legs making swift work of catching up – and the sunset has dyed the orchard multicoloured in the late evening air.

Dean breathes in the scent of apples like a drug, "Wow, this is sure different from London."

"Yeah…" Ginny flops down, tossing an apple from hand to hand so that her hands are soon scented with the fruit. The smell doesn't evoke memories of seeing Ron making pie late at night, nor make her feel bitter. It is a medicine – a little dose of badness to make her more good.

"So, what's wrong, Ginny?" Dean looks at her knowingly, "I'm all ears."

And so Ginny tells him. _He is too good to her after what she did. He doesn't deserve to have to deal with all her baggage and trauma. She wants him to be under the same sky as her forever but she doesn't deserve to have him there. She misses him when he's right there. She'd like him to love her again, like he did when they went out in his sixth year, and this time she'd like to love him back. She knows that the wound Harry and Ron inflicted is still raw and weeping but somehow it hurts less when Dean is there._

"Again? Ginny, I can't love you again if I never stopped." His gaze on her is fervent, and somehow he's moved closer to her, eyes searching hers desperately.

And as the day turned into night, Ginny Weasley realized that sometimes good things come to those who are ripped apart by the Boy-Who-Lived. They slept that night in the orchard, under the same sky and hunger forgotten.

* * *

At first, it's hard.

Ginny can't remember how relationships work properly after Harry. But Dean is gentle and caring and everything that Harry tried _(not hard enough)_ to be.

She is careful not to mess things up – by that, she means she does not mention how much Harry and Ron bother her, and the unfortunate turn of events that led to her fairytale (formulated at age 10 by her and her mother) being ripped away,

She didn't mind it being ripped away. She didn't believe in fairytales anymore, when people like Dean are shunned for not having 'pure' blood in their world and shunned for the colour of their skin in another.

She spots Harry and Ron at it again – they don't hide things well – and sees Ron in his underwear, a wolfish grin on his face as he stroked something – well, not just something, the thing – barely concealed by Harry's snitch-decorated boxers.

She retreated to the kitchen, face flushed. _Goddamn._ She needed cold water. _She needed to be numb._

* * *

Ginny Weasley found herself alone in the kitchen, another heady summer evening, some months later.

The window above the sink, overlooking the garden and path to the orchard, is open, and across the skies she can see bursts of fantastic colours, all the colours of the rainbow. They burn into her mind so when she closes her eyes, she can still see that view.

_Jackson Pollock created my evening sky,_ she thinks. _And Dean Thomas built my happiness._

A glass of (untouched) cold water stood next to her as she leant on the counter, breathing in the evening air. She can smell flowers – honeysuckle and roses and _violets_ – and the faintest scent of fallen apples, mouldering away and giving off the scent of beginnings and ends.

A light breeze blew onto her freckled face, closing the brown eyes with it's own quiet magic. She can imagine the winter to come, where she will see those green leaves fall and be reduced to dust, and the summer after that, and winters and summers after that. Ginny can smile – it's getting easier each day.

She did not know how long she stood there. All she knew was when she next opened her eyes – awoken from her reverie by the light sound of bare feet padding across the tiled floor – the sunbursts of colour had vanished, and now the stars were all out, diamonds sprinkled upon a blanket of black velvet. The dark does not feel threatening anymore.

Ginny turned to face Harry Potter, and looked evenly at him, up and down. He had grown over the past few months, his hair as messy and black as ever (possibly more messy thanks to Ron), eyes that startling green, scar just visible behind the spiky fringe. He wore a Chudley Cannons t-shirt, and a fresh pair of boxers – just plain green.

_He does not look like her Prince Charming._ Ginny can't help thinking of her taller, darker, more gentle boy, who sits for hours simply looking at life outside of the box and capturing it with his hands.

But…she feels the corner of her lip quirk up in a semi-smile…he does look like a great friend. A great lover to who he loves. _A great man who saved them all._

Ginny Weasley smiled. Really smiled.

"Harry. It's been a long time."

She walked forward and hugged him fiercely, and he returned the pressure comfortingly.

Happy tears fell from both sets of eyes (one set of emerald green, one set of chocolate brown), and Harry sighed, _"Thank you."_

She can still see out of the window. In the distance, just on the horizon, she can see the rising sun - a tiny orange orb to her eyes, and her paint-spattered sky returning. For some reason, the faint mirage of colours ranging from passionate red to dusky lavender makes her smile broaden.

The glass of cold water remained on the counter as the sun rose, no longer needed – she did not need to numb herself any longer.

Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley watched the sun rise, friends together. _Life had begun again._

* * *


End file.
